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Just to further derail things (I hope this doesn't get too far out) I think that's one of the things that makes soap operas such a good training ground. I've heard stories of soap stars being handed the day's scripts when they come in for makeup work. Even if that's an exaggeration, learning a script on the fly has to be valuable, not only as training in the craft, but also in terms of keeping things in perspective as an actor moves up the ladder toward bigger and better things.

Whatever one thinks of soaps (and I think decent writing at that rate is simply not possible, and decent acting almost as hard) soap actors are heroes... in the ancient Greek God sense of heroes, namely they do the humanly impossible. James Franco asked to be on a soap (General Hospital) for precisely that reason. I cannot imagine doing a soap for a week, and these people do it for years, often until a week or two before they literally DIE. They are marathoners, and I take my hats off to them. I'd love to hear Gene Francis and Jonathan Frakes have a conversation about learning lines. Yikes!

Moore: My experience in Star Trek taught me that technobabble could just swamp the drama in a show. Especially in a space opera, where you’re on ships in space and dealing with technical things, technobabble becomes a crutch to get into and out of situations. It just leaches all the drama away. The audience doesn’t know what the hell you’re talking about, and you’re making it up anyway. You make up a problem with the Enterprise warp drive, and then you solve it with a made-up problem, too.

One of the things I liked in STID (which other people didn't like about it) was the simple and obvious way Kirk fixed the warp core. He didn't do it by typing on a console or with a bunch of made-up technobabble. It reminded me of how in TOS when there was a problem Scotty had to climb into a jeffries tube and put the ship back together by hand.

Actually, GR addressed that issue in "The Making of Star Trek". He talked of replacing two pages of a script where the writer went into great technical detail on how to turn the ship around with the command "reverse course!"

One of the things I liked in STID (which other people didn't like about it) was the simple and obvious way Kirk fixed the warp core. He didn't do it by typing on a console or with a bunch of made-up technobabble. It reminded me of how in TOS when there was a problem Scotty had to climb into a jeffries tube and put the ship back together by hand.

Because fixing a piece of highly complex 23rd century technology should appear simple and obvious.

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A movie aiming low should not be praised for hitting that target.

There was a great moment in the Tressaurian Intersection where the Science Officer offered to go into detail of the mathematics of how the device worked. The captain waved her off and told her to cut to the chase in plain English. Much more satisfying than technobabble.

That's at least usually based on reality, as opposed to saying "Captain, the fauxparticle emanations from the alientech has verbed the madeupium in the component. We have to madeupdefense the ship to prevent it from going kerplowski."

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"There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.
—Will Rogers

That's at least usually based on reality, as opposed to saying "Captain, the fauxparticle emanations from the alientech has verbed the madeupium in the component. We have to madeupdefense the ship to prevent it from going kerplowski."

But for the general guy, it makes no difference. Astrophysicists do their facepalms in Trek, and forensics do their facepalms in CSI. The point is, based in reality or not, the scripts are done the same way: Technobabble causes and solves the problem, and there are long scenes of technobabble dialogue.

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A movie aiming low should not be praised for hitting that target.

One of the things I liked in STID (which other people didn't like about it) was the simple and obvious way Kirk fixed the warp core. He didn't do it by typing on a console or with a bunch of made-up technobabble. It reminded me of how in TOS when there was a problem Scotty had to climb into a jeffries tube and put the ship back together by hand.

Because fixing a piece of highly complex 23rd century technology should appear simple and obvious.

That depends on what it is. For a big dramatic moment having it all done with technobabble would have made it too nerdy. But it's something that always annoyed me in later Star Treks where the ship is under attack, the shields are down and they can be fixed simply by diverting power or repolarizing something. To me it's far more dramatically satisfying to see someone physically putting the ship back together than pressing a bunch of buttons.

This came up in a Project Potemkin thread no long ago. Most industry people use Final Draft because it's something of a standard. However, over the years it's become an increasingly pricy option and many no-budget filmmakers would rather spend their few pennies elsewhere.

CeltX can be a good alternative, but there are some limitations to it's free (student/amateur) version.

MS Word's .doc and .docx formats are pretty commonplace to a number of different programs, but they are not really compatible with the tools other screenwriters use, so working with writers accustomed to those tools can become a logistical issue.

It's proper screenwriting software, free to use, and imports and exports to industry standard formats, allowing cross-compatibility with people using Final Draft of CeltX. It also runs on Windows, Linux and OS X platforms (but the lattermost needs work, apparently).

The Write to Reel (link) website and forums are a great resource for writers and wanna-be writers. There are many discussions about screenwriting in general and specific scripts in particular, with many many screenplays available for download (you have to register to do so, and it can take a few days to get approved).